Reaper of Souls Highlights: Difficulties, Paragon 2.0, Blue Posts

Reaper of Souls Highlights: Difficulties, Paragon 2.0
In today's highlights we're going to give a bit of insight into how the difficulties and Paragon system have changed. Tomorrow you'll see the brand new addition of Clans and Communities as well as all the changed skills and runes and how they've changed.

Difficulties
The difficulties in Reaper of Souls have been entirely revamped. There is no more Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno or even Monster Power. They're now incorporated into a new system which you can switch before starting the game. The new difficulties offer some very nice rewards, but are also currently very hard.

Summary

Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno are gone. You don't unlock the difficulties consecutively and instead just choose them from a menu before starting the game, much like in any other game out there

You don't need to complete the campaign to unlock a difficulty. They are unlocked by character levels. For example Torment requires level 70

If the difficulty is too hard you can decrease it directly from the game, without exiting. To increase it you'll have to leave the game

Monster Power has been removed from the game and is incorporated into the new difficulties. Density right now is in a pre-1.0.8. state. It'll likely be balanced later into the Beta

There is no direct conversion of Monster Power to the new difficulties

New difficulties are Normal, Hard, Expert, Master and Torment, where Torment goes up to level VI (6) with a slider

Paragon 2.0
Paragon 2.0 is one of the changes that will come before Reaper of Souls, in the pre-expansion patch. The old Paragon bonuses have been removed and new, customizable ones, have been added. You are now given a nice amount of choices of how to build your character as you increase in Paragon levels.

Overview

Current Paragon bonuses are removed. That means the stats and the Magic Find/Gold Find bonus

The experience of all your characters' current Paragon levels will be unified and recalculated into the new Paragon system. To see what Paragon level you will be in Reaper of Souls we've created this handy chart

Each new Paragon level reached gives 1 Paragon point to all your characters of that mode (Normal/Hardcore)

There are 4 tabs where you can spend your Paragon points - Core, Offensive, Defensive, Utility. Each with 4 stats to choose and increase

Currently as you gain a new Paragon level a stat is given to one of the tabs in a rotating manner. First you get a point for Core, then Offensive, then Defensive, then Utility, rinse repeat

As it stands right now Offensive, Defensive and Utility have a cap of 50 points into each stat. That means that at level 800 you will have all 3 tabs maxed out. Core on the other hand has no limit and will receive a new point for every level above 800

If you create a new level 1 character you can distribute all the Paragon points on him straight away

Tabs and Stats

Core

Strength (5 per point)

Dexterity (5 per point)

Intelligence (5 per point)

Vitality (5 per point)

Offensive

Attack Speed (0.20% per point)

Critical Hit Chance (0.20% per point)

Critical Hit Damage (1.00% per point)

Cooldown Reduction (0.20% per point)

Defensive

Life (0.50% per point)

Armor (0.50% per point)

Dodge (0.20 per point)

Resist All (5 per point)

Utility

Maximums Resource (0.50 per point)

Magic Find (2.00% per point)

Movement Speed (0.50% per point)

Gold Pickup Radius (0.5 per point)

The Future of Old Crafting Materials
Players are concerned that their hard work in Diablo 3 so far has been for nothing due to old crafting materials not being used in Reaper of Souls recipes. This caused Veneras to post a huge explanation of how plans for the future of old materials look at the moment.

I hope for a blue to answer this. From the streams it seems only brimstone is used of those mats we have now. My question is if we can upgrade 10 to 1 our current materials into ROS materials? Otherwise there is absolutely no reason to play anymore. You can farm exp, but it doesnt seem to yield many paragon levels account wide unless you farm several para100s. And if gold, current items AND mats dont matter in ROS, why play (other than to kill time)?
That is actually a hard question to answer at this moment in time OioxFûl, because crafting in Reaper of Souls is still under development and as such is subject to change.

One of the big goals with Loot 2.0 is to make items more exiting and feel more rewarding, and we would also very much like to reduce the "meh" factor as much as we can. So what we are aiming for is to make item upgrades, whether they come from monsters or crafting, feel like they are earned though rewarding gameplay.

In that regards, we have some concerns about what might happen if people could hoard vanilla materials now for later conversion into RoS materials—If people could do such a conversion from old to new materials, then we think there would be a very real risk that people would near instantly craft their way to potential BiS gear shortly after the expansion is out, and thus if you could craft your way to the top right from the get go, then that would bypass or severely diminish the sense of progression and reward you would otherwise get from hunting for gear upgrades and crafting mats.

When Reaper of Soul goes live, the current plan is to convert your existing original crafting materials into what is currently the Inferno crafting tier, which will let people continue to craft all the items that they have access to now. Then once people start seeing new item tiers past level 61, those items will then be salvageable into new crafting materials that can be used to craft level 61 to 70 items.

Again, things may change, so this plan should not be considered as set in stone.

Other than density, what are the effects of a higher difficulty? How does the game make it more difficult? Is it only through higher monster damage/HP or are there other effects - such as new spells or anything like that?

This difficulity hierachy seems rather weird.. and confusing. Reading this it even sounds there are no Legendary items droping up untill 4th setting (ofcourse it won't be the case). Why all of this complication? Is there any chance to somehow know relative difference at the moment? Like.what difficulity matches current Mp3 inferno difficulity? Is it Torment + slider 1? 2? When bringing these news up to the public we want to know what you mean by new system compared to old one!!

I don't think so Droliaz, you can get Legendaries on any difficulty, the chance is just MUCH higher as you go up the difficulty scale and certain legendaries and legendary recipes will only drop on higher difficulties.

I've said it before a few times, I'm upset at the lack of Block Chance on the defensive paragon tab my Shield based Crusader is crying

This difficulity hierachy seems rather weird.. and confusing. Reading this it even sounds there are no Legendary items droping up untill 4th setting (ofcourse it won't be the case). Why all of this complication? Is there any chance to somehow know relative difference at the moment? Like.what difficulity matches current Mp3 inferno difficulity? Is it Torment + slider 1? 2? When bringing these news up to the public we want to know what you mean by new system compared to old one!!

As it's said in the article itself there is no direct comparison between the new difficulties and the old MP levels. Especially since monster density is not in yet.

Also I don't see the confusion with difficulties. Like in any other game you can select a higher difficulty and you can see the bonuses for selecting it. Selecting Master for example gives you 200% Extra gold/xp, Bounties award double currency, New legendary recipes can drop. What gives off the impression Legendary items don't drop previous? It says "New Legendary Recipes can drop", not "Legendary Recipes now drop".

I think that they are not adressing the main problem here and that is that we will basically outgear the game once again... so there is going to be a point in which we will have nothing to do and there would not be a challenge naking the game boring once again... They should add some new mechanics that make the game ALWAYS hard to those who want a real challenge not matter how good your gear is but how good you are with the class you are playing with.

I would really like to know what the actual difficulty effects are. I assume the only reason not to call them "normal nightmare and hell" are because they don't do the typical Diablo difficulty thing and set the floor monster level +30+50 and +60.
what then? monster level = player level +1+3 and +5? monster life and damage x1 x2 x3? Do the difficulties affect campaign and adventure mode differently?

And what about Nightmare, Hell and Inferno related achievements? Are they replaced with Hard, Expert and Master achievements? And if yes, what about the players who already got Nightmare, Hell and Inferno achievements? Do they have to replay the game on Hard, Expert and Master? Or maybe they'll automatically get Hard, Expert and Master achievements?

Again, the current achievements that are related to difficulty will be gone. If you already have them, they will become feats of strength and will be in that section of the achievement menu. Otherwise, it will be impossible to get them anymore.

There will likely be new achievements related to the new difficulty modes, but I don't think there has been any details on that yet.

Do they have to replay the game on Hard, Expert and Master? Or maybe they'll automatically get Hard, Expert and Master achievements?

The new difficulties are completely unrelated to the old ones. You don't have to play through the game multiple times anymore, and you can change to any difficulty that you've unlocked (by character level, not story progress) at any time, for any character.

I think that they are not adressing the main problem here and that is that we will basically outgear the game once again... so there is going to be a point in which we will have nothing to do and there would not be a challenge naking the game boring once again... They should add some new mechanics that make the game ALWAYS hard to those who want a real challenge not matter how good your gear is but how good you are with the class you are playing with.

It's called hardcore mode.

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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.